Death row suicide

Just last week, Lode man's sentence had been reduced to life

SAN ANDREAS - Convicted killer George Hatton Smithey took his own life Saturday morning in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison, just days after a judge had commuted his death sentence to life in prison.

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By Dana M. Nichols

recordnet.com

By Dana M. Nichols

Posted Aug. 31, 2010 at 12:01 AM

By Dana M. Nichols
Posted Aug. 31, 2010 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

SAN ANDREAS - Convicted killer George Hatton Smithey took his own life Saturday morning in his cell on death row at San Quentin State Prison, just days after a judge had commuted his death sentence to life in prison.

Smithey, 70, hanged himself using bedsheets, prison spokesman Lt. Samuel Robinson said. Smithey did not leave a suicide note or any other obvious explanation for the act, Robinson said.

It was a shocking end to more than two decades on a legal roller-coaster for relatives of Cheryl Anne Nesler, the woman Smithey stabbed to death during an attempted rape and robbery in 1988. Family members had hoped Smithey would face execution in accordance with his original sentence. They found themselves back in court each time his death sentence was challenged.

"At least we won't be wondering if something else is going to come up, and we are going to have to go through the thing again," Glenda Hampton, Nesler's mother, said Monday after learning of Smithey's death.

It was Aug. 23 that Calaveras County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Smith ordered Smithey's sentence commuted to life in prison.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it is unconstitutional to execute a mentally retarded person.

In 2008, the California Supreme Court ordered Smithey's case back to Calaveras County to determine whether he was retarded in the legal sense of the term. Psychologists for the prosecution and the defense agreed that he was. Prosecutors this month dropped their effort to have him executed.

"It was just that Cheryl was denied justice. Maybe this will be the end of it. I guess it has to be if he is not alive anymore," Hampton said.

Many of those touched by the case found themselves wondering why Smithey chose this moment to take his life. Several speculated that he might have dreaded his pending move from death row into the general prison population.

Deputy District Attorney Seth Matthews said he doesn't have any answers, but he wonders about something Smithey said July 22 during his examination by forensic psychologist Daniel Martell.

Matthews said that when Martell came out of that interview, Martell told him that Smithey "didn't want to be found retarded or labeled retarded."

The timing of Smithey's death took some by surprise.

"I'm hoping this brings some closure to the victim's family," Matthews said.

Robinson said suicides are less common on California's death row than deaths by natural causes but more common than executions. Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, he said, 52 condemned inmates have died from natural causes, 18 committed suicide, 13 were executed in California, one was executed in Missouri, and five died from other causes.

Smithey lived alone in his cell, and officers found no evidence to indicate his death was anything but a suicide, Robinson said. A guard found Smithey hanging at 6:24 a.m. Saturday, and he was declared dead at 7:04 a.m.

Wanda Weatherman, an aunt of Nesler's, said she doesn't like to use the word "closure" but suspects the family will experience some relief and possibly healing in the wake of Smithey's death. "We're just glad it's all over," Weatherman said.